Examining the development of a secular, purely material conception of human beings in the early Enlightenment, this book provides a fresh perspective on the intellectual culture of this period, and ...
More

Examining the development of a secular, purely material conception of human beings in the early Enlightenment, this book provides a fresh perspective on the intellectual culture of this period, and challenges certain influential interpretations of irreligious thought and the ‘Radical Enlightenment’. Beginning with the debate on the soul in England, in which political and religious concerns were intertwined, and ending with the eruption of materialism onto the public stage in mid 18th‐century France, this book looks at attempts to explain how the material brain thinks without the need for an immaterial and immortal soul. It shows how this current of thinking fed into the later 18th‐century ‘Natural History of Man’, the earlier roots of which have generally been ignored. Although much attention has been paid to the atheistic French materialists, their link to the preceding period has been studied only partially, and the current interest in what is called the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ has helped to obscure rather than enlighten this history. By bringing out the importance of both Protestant theological debates and medical thinking in England, and by following the different debates on the soul in Holland and France, this book shows that attempts to find a single coherent strand of radical irreligious thought running through the early Enlightenment, coming to fruition in the second half of the 18th century, ignore the multiple currents which composed Enlightenment thinking.Less

Bodies of Thought : Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment

Ann Thomson

Published in print: 2008-07-01

Examining the development of a secular, purely material conception of human beings in the early Enlightenment, this book provides a fresh perspective on the intellectual culture of this period, and challenges certain influential interpretations of irreligious thought and the ‘Radical Enlightenment’. Beginning with the debate on the soul in England, in which political and religious concerns were intertwined, and ending with the eruption of materialism onto the public stage in mid 18th‐century France, this book looks at attempts to explain how the material brain thinks without the need for an immaterial and immortal soul. It shows how this current of thinking fed into the later 18th‐century ‘Natural History of Man’, the earlier roots of which have generally been ignored. Although much attention has been paid to the atheistic French materialists, their link to the preceding period has been studied only partially, and the current interest in what is called the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ has helped to obscure rather than enlighten this history. By bringing out the importance of both Protestant theological debates and medical thinking in England, and by following the different debates on the soul in Holland and France, this book shows that attempts to find a single coherent strand of radical irreligious thought running through the early Enlightenment, coming to fruition in the second half of the 18th century, ignore the multiple currents which composed Enlightenment thinking.

Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these ...
More

Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called ‘superstitious’ by educated elites. For centuries, religious believers used ‘superstition’ as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith ‘wrongly’. From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what ‘superstition’ was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make ‘rational’ sense of popular superstitions by blaming them on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons. Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving ‘superstitious’ customs as folklore and ethnic heritage. This book offers the first comprehensive, integrated account of Western Europe's long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, the author constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular ‘superstition’ in the European mind.Less

Enchanted Europe

Euan Cameron

Published in print: 2010-03-18

Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called ‘superstitious’ by educated elites. For centuries, religious believers used ‘superstition’ as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith ‘wrongly’. From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what ‘superstition’ was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make ‘rational’ sense of popular superstitions by blaming them on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons. Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving ‘superstitious’ customs as folklore and ethnic heritage. This book offers the first comprehensive, integrated account of Western Europe's long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, the author constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular ‘superstition’ in the European mind.

The author presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in Radical Enlightenment, and now focusing his attention on the first ...
More

The author presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in Radical Enlightenment, and now focusing his attention on the first half of the 18th century, he returns to the original sources to offer a new perspective on the nature and development of the most important currents in modern thought. The author traces many of the core principles of Western modernity to their roots in the social, political, and philosophical ferment of this period: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression. He emphasizes the dual character of the Enlightenment and the bitter struggle between, on the one hand, a generally dominant, anti-democratic mainstream, supporting the monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authority, and on the other a largely repressed democratic, republican, and ‘materialist’ radical fringe. He also contends that the supposedly separate French, British, German, Dutch, and Italian enlightenments interacted to such a degree that their study in isolation gives a hopelessly distorted picture.Less

Jonathan I. Israel

Published in print: 2006-10-12

The author presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in Radical Enlightenment, and now focusing his attention on the first half of the 18th century, he returns to the original sources to offer a new perspective on the nature and development of the most important currents in modern thought. The author traces many of the core principles of Western modernity to their roots in the social, political, and philosophical ferment of this period: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression. He emphasizes the dual character of the Enlightenment and the bitter struggle between, on the one hand, a generally dominant, anti-democratic mainstream, supporting the monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authority, and on the other a largely repressed democratic, republican, and ‘materialist’ radical fringe. He also contends that the supposedly separate French, British, German, Dutch, and Italian enlightenments interacted to such a degree that their study in isolation gives a hopelessly distorted picture.

What is the role of language in human cognition? Could we attain self-consciousness and construct our civilisation without language? Such were the questions at the basis of eighteenth-century debates ...
More

What is the role of language in human cognition? Could we attain self-consciousness and construct our civilisation without language? Such were the questions at the basis of eighteenth-century debates on the joint evolution of language, mind, and culture. This book highlights the importance of language in the social theory, epistemology, and aesthetics of the Enlightenment. While focusing on the Berlin Academy under Frederick the Great, this study situates the Berlin debates within a larger temporal and geographical framework. It argues that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of all forms of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion rather than a feature of the so-called ‘Counter-Enlightenment’. Enlightenment authors of different persuasions investigated whether speechless human beings could have developed their language and society on their own. Such inquiries usually pondered the difficult shift from natural signs like cries and gestures to the artificial, articulate words of human language. This transition from nature to artifice was mirrored in other domains of inquiry, such as the origins of social relations, inequality, the arts and the sciences. By examining a wide variety of authors—Leibniz, Wolff, Condillac, Rousseau, Michaelis, and Herder, among others—this book emphasises the open and malleable character of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. The language debates demonstrate that German theories of culture and language were not merely a rejection of French ideas. New notions of the genius of language and its role in cognition were constructed through a complex interaction with cross-European currents, especially via the prize contests at the Berlin Academy.Less

Language and Enlightenment : The Berlin Debates of the Eighteenth Century

Avi Lifschitz

Published in print: 2012-09-27

What is the role of language in human cognition? Could we attain self-consciousness and construct our civilisation without language? Such were the questions at the basis of eighteenth-century debates on the joint evolution of language, mind, and culture. This book highlights the importance of language in the social theory, epistemology, and aesthetics of the Enlightenment. While focusing on the Berlin Academy under Frederick the Great, this study situates the Berlin debates within a larger temporal and geographical framework. It argues that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of all forms of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion rather than a feature of the so-called ‘Counter-Enlightenment’. Enlightenment authors of different persuasions investigated whether speechless human beings could have developed their language and society on their own. Such inquiries usually pondered the difficult shift from natural signs like cries and gestures to the artificial, articulate words of human language. This transition from nature to artifice was mirrored in other domains of inquiry, such as the origins of social relations, inequality, the arts and the sciences. By examining a wide variety of authors—Leibniz, Wolff, Condillac, Rousseau, Michaelis, and Herder, among others—this book emphasises the open and malleable character of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. The language debates demonstrate that German theories of culture and language were not merely a rejection of French ideas. New notions of the genius of language and its role in cognition were constructed through a complex interaction with cross-European currents, especially via the prize contests at the Berlin Academy.

Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late 17th and 18th centuries — in the wake of the Scientific Revolution — of ...
More

Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late 17th and 18th centuries — in the wake of the Scientific Revolution — of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophes, culminating in Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. In this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery, substituting the modern principles of equality, democracy, and universality, the Radical Enlightenment played a crucially important part. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of the late 18th century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have been little studied doubtless largely because of its very wide international sweep and the obvious difficulty of fitting it into the restrictive conventions of ‘national history’ which until recently tended to dominate all historiography. The greatest obstacle to the Radical Enlightenment finding its proper place in modern historical writing is simply that it was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish, or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents, particular stress is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism.Less

Radical Enlightenment : Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750

Jonathan I. Israel

Published in print: 2001-02-08

Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late 17th and 18th centuries — in the wake of the Scientific Revolution — of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophes, culminating in Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. In this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery, substituting the modern principles of equality, democracy, and universality, the Radical Enlightenment played a crucially important part. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of the late 18th century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have been little studied doubtless largely because of its very wide international sweep and the obvious difficulty of fitting it into the restrictive conventions of ‘national history’ which until recently tended to dominate all historiography. The greatest obstacle to the Radical Enlightenment finding its proper place in modern historical writing is simply that it was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish, or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents, particular stress is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism.

Prussian discipline is legendary. Arguments about the oppressive nature of the Prussian state and the shadow that it allegedly cast on the development of civil society have been central to debates ...
More

Prussian discipline is legendary. Arguments about the oppressive nature of the Prussian state and the shadow that it allegedly cast on the development of civil society have been central to debates about the modern history of Germany. In particular, many historians have seen the absence of a revolution in the eighteenth century as a symptom of a delayed and incomplete emancipation of the Prussian bourgeoisie. Prussia's urban dwellers have often been portrait as poor relations of the self-reliant and assertive bourgeois of Western Europe and the Atlantic world: economically backward and politically oppressed they were allegedly in no position to challenge the iron grip of the state and question the authority of the Hohenzollern dynasty. This book challenges some of the received views about the relation between state and urban society in eighteenth century Prussia. Based on detailed research the author explores several instances where urban dwellers successfully resisted government policies and forced Frederick the Great and his successors to give in to their demands. The study thus sheds light on a little known historical reality in which weak Hohenzollern monarchs and a still weaker Prussian bureaucracy were confronted with prosperous, fearless, argumentative and occasionally violent Prussian burghers. Such conflicts between state and citizens were by no means specific to Prussia. Rather the events in Prussia were on many levels connected to similar contemporary developments in other parts of Europe and North America. The study systematically explores these links and thus develops a new European and Atlantic perspective on Prussian history in the eighteenth century.Less

Rebellious Prussians : Urban Political Culture under Frederick the Great and his Successors

Florian Schui

Published in print: 2013-03-07

Prussian discipline is legendary. Arguments about the oppressive nature of the Prussian state and the shadow that it allegedly cast on the development of civil society have been central to debates about the modern history of Germany. In particular, many historians have seen the absence of a revolution in the eighteenth century as a symptom of a delayed and incomplete emancipation of the Prussian bourgeoisie. Prussia's urban dwellers have often been portrait as poor relations of the self-reliant and assertive bourgeois of Western Europe and the Atlantic world: economically backward and politically oppressed they were allegedly in no position to challenge the iron grip of the state and question the authority of the Hohenzollern dynasty. This book challenges some of the received views about the relation between state and urban society in eighteenth century Prussia. Based on detailed research the author explores several instances where urban dwellers successfully resisted government policies and forced Frederick the Great and his successors to give in to their demands. The study thus sheds light on a little known historical reality in which weak Hohenzollern monarchs and a still weaker Prussian bureaucracy were confronted with prosperous, fearless, argumentative and occasionally violent Prussian burghers. Such conflicts between state and citizens were by no means specific to Prussia. Rather the events in Prussia were on many levels connected to similar contemporary developments in other parts of Europe and North America. The study systematically explores these links and thus develops a new European and Atlantic perspective on Prussian history in the eighteenth century.

This book is a collection of essays by leading practitioners of modern European intellectual history, reflecting on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field. The essays each ...
More

This book is a collection of essays by leading practitioners of modern European intellectual history, reflecting on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field. The essays each attempt to assess their respective disciplines, giving an account of their development and theoretical evolution, while also reflecting on current problems, challenges, and possibilities. Collectively, they seek to assess the state of modern European intellectual history as a field against the background of its past and the foreground of its future development.Less

Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History

Published in print: 2014-01-14

This book is a collection of essays by leading practitioners of modern European intellectual history, reflecting on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field. The essays each attempt to assess their respective disciplines, giving an account of their development and theoretical evolution, while also reflecting on current problems, challenges, and possibilities. Collectively, they seek to assess the state of modern European intellectual history as a field against the background of its past and the foreground of its future development.

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2017. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 13 December 2017